Sports events need crowds
As COVID’s dark days showed us, sports events need crowds from both a financial and experiential perspective. In their planning, organisers need to prioritise selling and allocating tickets and, over the past decade, technology has proven the catalyst for seismic changes in both processes. The advent of digital ticketing in sports, just over 15 years ago, introduced exciting new possibilities in terms of convenience and personalised engagement for fans, whilst also allowing event organisers to offer enhanced security, be more sustainable and reduce resource costs. The subsequent increase in adoption, that rapidly accelerated post pandemic, means sports events now largely – if not wholly – rely on digital ticketing solutions and fans expect to receive the benefits they offer.
When implementing a digital ticketing solution, rights holders have the choice of building their own bespoke solution or relying on one of the many high quality 3rd party solutions on the market, either directly or by integrating into their existing platforms. The decision will be shaped by budget and event requirements but, whatever they choose, if they are to successfully deliver the end-to-end benefits – both for fans and themselves – then implementing a single sign-on (SSO) to identify the user and connect the touch points in their experience is key.
By leveraging proven SSO technology through owned channels, rights holders can better understand the behaviour of fans while minimising costs. They can track activity from the moment of ticket purchase through to venue access, and participation with in-stadia activities like retail and sponsor activations, using the data to improve customer experience and tailor more personalised engagement opportunities.
Safe & secure
A key part of customer experience at any sports event is feeling safe and secure. Digital ticketing protects fans by dramatically reducing the risk of fraud and scanning technology on the gates not only speeds up access, but it’s lets organisers ensure only those who should be attending are let in. Further innovations such as facial recognition software and advanced surveillance systems help organisers to manage crowds and ensure a safer environment for fans.
Getting technical
Owning the digital ticketing experience
TEC helped the R&A overhaul their digital ticketing offering for The Open Championship, as part of a broader digital transformation centred on refreshing their different platforms and ensuring the fan experience was kept on own owned channels rather than diverting it to 3rd party sites.
For ticketing, they continued to work with Secutix due the inherent cost benefits, but a new interface was built on TheOpen.com allowing them to own the experience and capture data on customer behaviour.
For the interface, AWS Cognito was chosen as the SSO to link to the customer records on the ticket providers’ platform due to its ease of management and scalability.
If you want to discover more about our work with The Open Championship, check out our case study.
